The Paper Chase Case and Epistemic Accounts of Request Normativity

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (4):199-205 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

According to the epistemic account of request normativity, a request gives us reasons by revealing normatively relevant information. The information is normative, not the request itself. I raise a new objection to the epistemic account based on situations where we might try to avoid someone requesting something of us. The best explanation of these situations seems to be that we do not want to acquire a new reason to do something. For example, if you know I am going to ask you to read a draft of my paper, you might avoid running into me so as to avoid acquiring a reason to read a draft of my paper. I then argue that the epistemic account can successfully reply to this objection and that in fact the epistemic account does a better job of accounting for cases like this than competing views of the normativity of requests.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

What Makes Requests Normative? The Epistemic Account Defended.Daniel Weltman - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (64):1715-43.
Giving Practical Reasons.David Enoch - 2011 - Philosophers' Imprint 11.
In Defense of Constitutivism About Epistemic Normativity.David Horst - 2022 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (2):232-258.
Kornblith on Epistemic Normativity.Matthew McGrath - forthcoming - In Luis Oliveira & Joshua DiPaolo, Kornblith and His Critics. Wiley-Blackwell.
An instrumentalist unification of zetetic and epistemic reasons.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Epistemic value and virtue epistemology.Tsung-Hsing Ho - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Southampton

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-05-23

Downloads
191 (#131,816)

6 months
88 (#72,716)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Daniel Weltman
Ashoka University

Citations of this work

What Makes Requests Normative? The Epistemic Account Defended.Daniel Weltman - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (64):1715-43.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The morality of freedom.J. Raz - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (1):108-109.
The suberogatory.Julia Driver - 1992 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (3):286 – 295.
Authority and Reason‐Giving.David Enoch - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2):296-332.
Giving Practical Reasons.David Enoch - 2011 - Philosophers' Imprint 11.

View all 11 references / Add more references